Wetaskiwin – Regional Airport

Archive for the ‘Airlines’ Category

There are a few fears in life that defy logic. Fear of spiders may be one, fear of lifts is another, and perhaps a fear of flying is another. Everyday, thousands of planes take off around the world, carrying millions of passengers safely to their destination. Flying is one of the safest, if not the safest, form of travel available. It is far safer than getting in the car, yet over one third of the population still report a fear of flying.

People cite many concerns when they talk of their fear of flying. Many report a lack of confidence in the air traffic control system and fear that a simple mistake on the ground can lead to disaster in the air. Then there are fears of faults with the plane itself. Most people saw the pictures of the concord crash a few years ago and when you’re sitting on an airplane, a few feet from the massive jet engines humming steadily, it seems very hard to believe that nothing could go wrong with such a machine. In fact the very shape and appearance of airplanes does little to inspire confidence in passengers who already are having doubts about the airworthiness of the plane.

Then there are the reports and press attention of the troubles of deep vein thrombosis.

The fact of the matter however, is that flying is extremely safe. It is one of the wonders of technology that air travel, with all the multitude of potential failures, keep delivering flight after flight, on time and without a hitch. In fact, in contrast to almost all other forms of travel, air travel is becoming safer and safer every year.

The statistics speak for themselves. Do you know what the chances are of having a single fatality on a flight? Well according to the BBC, it is 1 in 16 million. And in the vast majority of accidents where there are fatalities, more than half of the other passengers survive. What this means is that even if you defy all the odds and are on one of the few unlucky flights that does crash, you are still more likely to survive than die in the accident.

However, there is one issue with air travel that the statistics don’t commend so highly. Delays, lost luggage and missing flights are still frequent issues that plague passengers. Luckily, all of these can be covered for with some good, comprehensive travel insurance.

Anyone who has held their hand out of a car into the wind to play airplane already has a fundamental impression of control surfaces on the airplane.

When the heel of the palm went down, the airpressure under the hand pushed the hand up. That’s called lift. The airflow over/under the hand changes with the shape of the hand or airfoil. If you had little cut-outs near your wrist, there wouldn’t be as much lift.

The tail section contains control surfaces for keeping the plane stable and controllable.

1) Horizontal: The horizontal, non-moving part is called the stabilizer, and it prevents uncontrolled up-and-down motion of the nose. The small hinged sections on each side are called elevators, which work in unison. It is controlled by the cockpit control wheel/stick and increases or decreases lift. When forward pressure is applied on the wheel, the elevators move downward, which increases the length of the tail causing more lift, which forces the tail upward, causing the nose to drop. There is also a small hinged section in the elevator which is controlled by a small vertical wheel on the cockpit console which is used to finetune the elebator trim. Hense the name trim tab.

2) Vertical: The vertical non-moving part which prevents the nose from uncontrolled swinging side to side. The large hinged section is the rudder. The rudder is controlled by the foot pedals in the cockpit, and deflects the tail to the right or left.

The wings generate most of the lift to hold the plane in the air. Different models of aircraft will have wings of different shapes and in different vertical locations. On a Cessna, the wing is high, and on a Piper, it is low. On an F14, the can change from a forward angle to “swept back”.

On most small planes, the wings also carry the fuel.

There are many control surfaces on a wing:

1) The aileron is the hinged part of the back of the wing towards the tip which is used to roll the wings from side to side. There is one on each side of the plane and they work opposite of each other. When one moves up, the other moves down.

2) Flaps are the hinged sections on the back of the wing near the fuselage. Flaps are deployed downward on takeoff and landing to increase the lift produced by the wing and allows the plane to fly at slower speeds.

3) Spoilers and Slats are used on high performance/commercial aircraft and also changed the aerodynamics of the wing.